Granny knows best as Mousa Dembélé prepares for Tottenham's final push for Champions League stardom

If Mousa Dembélé is fit to inspire Tottenham Hotspur again in their final push
towards a Champions League place against Chelsea on Wednesday, the odds are
that he will know less about his illustrious opponents than his grandma does.

Central role: Mousa Dembélé can play a key part in getting Tottenham back into the Champions LeaguePhoto: EPA

Dembélé, battling to be fit for the critical fixture after a couple of hamstring injury setbacks, concedes with a smile in his delightfully chilled manner that, as a doer rather than a watcher, he is not a big one for following football.

Yet his mum’s remarkable mother, Maria Huygens, back in Belgium? Now that is a very different story.

Maria is 80 and paralysed by multiple sclerosis at home in Antwerp but she will be hooked to the Stamford Bridge game on the box.

“She used to play football before it became popular for women,” Dembélé says at Tottenham’s Enfield training complex.

“If I listen to her stories, she was quite good! She’s been suffering from MS and has been in a wheelchair since I was a baby but watches every game and knows all the names of all the players in football.

"It’s very funny because a few months ago she was talking about this player and I was like ‘who?’ Even friends of mine don’t know these names but she does!

“She’s my No 1 fan, follows my career every game, and has such passion. If we lose, she’s more depressed than me and if we win, she’s even happier than me! It’s very special.”

Maria has reason to feel proud. Her grandson has been one of the signings of the season, a snip at £15 million from Fulham as he has transferred his alluring combination for a big man, of elegance, power and skill, to White Hart Lane.

It is just as easy to warm to Dembélé off the field too with his laid-back charm and disarming openness.

This artist of the field says he has inherited the character traits of his Flemish-born mum, professional painter Tilly – “she’s calm, very relaxed” – rather than his Malian dad Yaya. “He has a bit more fire, more dynamic. It’s not easy to get me angry,” he smiles.

“This year, only one time.” Guess who made him bite? “[Luis] Suárez, I think,” he says with a smile, thinking of their handbags at Anfield in March. “I was a bit angry and I was a bit stupid maybe, too. I didn’t have to react.”

Dembélé is no slave to footballing hype. He loves playing but sounds quite unfussed about all the hoopla surrounding the game.

Instead, he will happily wax cheerily about his “diverse” off-field interests, like his love of musicals and acoustic guitar, his passion for travel – this summer, he is off on safari in Tanzania – and his determination to match his Belgian buddy Jan Vertonghen on the golf course.

He feels a deep connection with Africa and says that after his career has finished he is thinking of setting up a footballing project for kids in Mali, where dad Yaya lived until the late 1970s when he sought a new life in Europe and eventually set up an export business.

“It’s not big plans but in the back of my mind,” Dembélé says. “I’ve been five times to Mali and when you’re there, it makes you feel differently, like you realise you’ve a lot in life to be thankful for and you have to give something back as well.”

Growing up in Antwerp, he did not support a team, never watched the sport on TV but, with his mum not happy about him playing in the street, would juggle a ball around endlessly in an area of the living room she put aside for him to practise.

“I broke everything inside the house – boom! – but my mother was always very nice, she’d say: ‘OK, OK have another ball.’ ” Thus emerged, eventually, the lovely instant control which decorates the English game now.

Like any good artist should be, Dembélé is highly self-critical. Of his season, he shrugs that he’s not been bad but “I can play much better than this”.

Yet even from his days as a championship-winning creator at AZ Alkmaar in Holland, he has always felt he could join the list of Europe’s elite players.

“Difficult, but possible,” he says. “I have to work more to achieve this but it’s my goal to go there, to be at the very top.”

That ambition demands Champions League football but Dembélé is loathe to predictions about Tottenham’s fate because of the inconsistency which frustrates him.

“Top teams like Man United have these big players like Giggs who make sure they have the right mentality. We have to try to find this too.”

The other week, Dembélé, for once, watched a TV game and found himself transfixed as Dortmund pummelled Real Madrid.

“Fantastic stadium, unbelievable supporters, played with style. It fills you with the thought: ‘I’d like to be on that stage.’ ”

He could be. In both the Champions League and the World Cup next season for a Belgium team blooming with Premier League talent. What has prompted this flowering of famous Belgians?

“Maybe just a coincidence but I believe if we get to Brazil, we can do something surprising. The same with Spurs too if we can reach the Champions League.”

If they do, he vows to bring Maria over to watch. “Now that would be great. My grandmother once saw me play for Alkmaar in a Champions League game but with Tottenham it’s different. I know we can do something special.”

Tottenham Hotspur are sponsored by Investec, specialist bank and asset manager, in cup games – visit investec.co.uk or follow @investec